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Site Review Reviewed by NM Bill McGeary
One evening as I was looking around the web for new places to play I happened onto the ChessCube home page. A very professional affect was my thought as I scanned it. I wasn’t sure what types of games were available from the front page, but there were some resources available of both a commercial and free nature. I decided to play a game and was very pleased to note that seeking and playing occurred via the browser. The next surprise was that I could have a playing account that would keep track of my rating and some games without spending a cent, not merely a guest account!
Of course I selected PLAY, which brought another panel to the screen, to determine what sort of game I was seeking. 3-minute or 5-minute games seem the preference, some with increment. There were options for slower or faster games as well as Chess960 games. I was surprised how quickly me seek was accepted, rarely on other sites would I have a game in under 5 seconds. The board graphics appeared and I started to play. The board was very easy to look at, no harsh colors or piece sets from the 12th century. After the game I had a short exchange with my opponent and another game was arranged. Later I went to the ROOMS option and found that these are simply chat room with conversational threads, the name of each room indicates the topic of chat. The last thing that night was to find out that the TOURNAMENTS option was not yet up and going. Across the top of the page were some resources; SHOP, CINEMA, PREMIUM, MORE and HELP. MORE was a surprising resource with a blog, leaderboards, articles by titled players, forums for discussing the improvement of ChessCube. The PREMIUM option describes the benefits of upgrading your account at a price that seemed very reasonable. Also, there are videos with game analysis, opening preparation and general instruction. Each of the resources were well thought out and designed to assist the player. There are a few things which I had to discover. Tournaments still seem to be in the construction/ implementation phase; to view the videos requires downloading software from ChessCube and sometimes an option (such as CINEMA or MORE) are unavailable because they are being worked on. I also found the players on ChessCube to be well mannered and helpful in a number of cases. Not having to use a client to go with a web browser because all of the activities on the site are running via java makes it a lot easier to get in and start playing. The interfaces all look very good about them. The use of buttons and tabs relieve the user from remembering a number of commands that other sites require. To seek a game you click a couple of times and wait, instead of having to remember a sequence of keystrokes to get the type of game you want. Combined with the non-playing resources (videos, blog, chat rooms) ChessCube is finding a solid platform for the players it attracts.
Of course there are
improvements possible, players notes or indication of titled players would
be nice. Yet that seems to be a focus of the ChessCube staff, which means
it will only get better. At a price of $24.95 (US) a year this site is as
good a deal as a player will find. In my opinion this site is easily worth
the money and will only get better.
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Chessville
The
Advertise to Single insert:
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Chess
resources on the web have certainly increased over the past decade, possibly
not as fast as some other activities, but increased. I have never been one
fast enough truly “web surf”, but I do find some stuff. One of the places
that I found which I would like to share with the readers is
Once
logged on it took me a moment or two before I realized that activities are
presented as tabs. Down the left side of the page were colored markers
that will take you to various areas: PLAY, WATCH, TOURNAMENTS, BUDDIES and
ROOMS are the options.
